It was short after 7 o’ clock Thursday evening, when a power column started to explode like fireworks. A resident immediately called the Fire Service as the area of East Attica still suffers from the painful and deadly wildfires in July.
Powerful winds blowing with intensity of up to 9 and 10 Beaufort have brought several trees to fall and left without power several areas mostly in North and East Attica on Thursday.
According to local news website irafina.gr, possible cause of the explosions was a power cable cut by the strong winds.
By Friday noon, households and businesses remain without electricity in Sounio, Anavyssos, Keratea and Varnavas, while earlier power outages had occurred in several suburbs of North Athens. the suburb of Melissia is without electricity for three days, state broadcaster ERT report at 1 o’ clock noon.
The power outages are attributed to the gale force winds that bring trees to fall – probably cut also electricity cables as we see in the picture above.
From Wednesday morning when the extreme weather phenomena set in until Thursday night, the Fire Service has received more than 700 calls to remove trees and heavy objects swept away by the winds.
At the same time, fire fighters have been struggling against wildfires in Attica and other regions in West Greece hit by barometric low Xenophon.
Four villages on the island of Kythera remain without electricity since Thursday afternoon.
Power outages occurred also on the north coast of Chania prefecture, Crete, on Thursday afternoon. The outages lasted some two hours and stroke the most touristic areas in the West of Crete.
Greece is preparing for the Mediterranean Cyclone, medicane “Zorbas”, forecast to strike the South Ionian Sea and West Peloponnese at around 5 – 6 a.m. on Saturday, September 29th 2018.
Currently there are no strong winds blowing in Attica but this is considered ‘calmness before the storm,’ as Zorbas is expecting to strike Attica as well.
